


Wolves in the World

by elysiumwaits



Series: Let's Go Steal a Secret Husband [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Angst, Found Family, Interlude, M/M, Peter and Stiles are the same age, Peter doesn't make an appearance but is still pretty important so he's up there, Secrets, Team Dynamics, Thief Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 22:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20348149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: The crew is compromised, so Stiles takes them to one of the last safe places he has, even if it comes with a slew of memories and forces him to face what he left behind. An interlude, the eye of the storm.--Papers upon papers that prove what Stiles has done over the years, that, when put together like this, create a pretty clear picture of his crimes. It’s not everything, and it’s got nothing from when he joined Lydia and the crew, but it’s damning for Mischief. Links a whole lot of people to him, too, and includes at least two security camera stills of his face, one single mention of his real name as a “person of interest” in a homicide report, and a copy of his California marriage license tying him to Peter Hale. It’s his confession, neatly organized into one folder, waiting to self-destruct and take them all out in the explosion.





	Wolves in the World

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly talking and exposition, not going to lie. It’s a build up for part 3, and is absolutely necessary for that part to make sense. I didn’t want to make it a second chapter because I do think the first piece stands on its own pretty well. Part 3 is started!
> 
> Fair warning, this one doesn’t have the neat manipulation tricks that are present in the first fic, but they’ll be back in the third fic. 
> 
> There isn’t much humor here. It’s not exactly angst either, though, but I’ve tagged for it anyway.
> 
> Also, ages in this are pretty screwy. The “same age” tag is because there’s no tag for “Peter is slightly older than Stiles and roughly the same age as Derek instead of forty-something”. Malia is 4. Just… fill in whatever ages you want for Stiles and Derek and Peter, tbh.
> 
> Title is a quote from Leverage, from The Beantown Bail Out Job.

They can’t go back to the Chicago base. Every base they have has to be assumed compromised, considering Rafael McCall knew exactly where to send Peter, and Stiles didn’t get the chance to ask how. It’s safer, he knows, to blow all of the potential evidence to smithereens and disappear into the wind, all in opposite directions, vanish into different countries, and never contact each other again. 

For some reason, though, here they all are, standing on the front porch of a safe house in California while he fishes the spare key out from underneath a flower pot. They’ve all got their go-bags in hand, nondescript duffel bags thrown over shoulders. 

Somewhere along the drive, Stiles changed out of his ridiculous flashy designer influencer get-up and into a flannel, t-shirt, and jeans. Lydia, meanwhile, goes from party dress to not-flashy-but-still-designer clothes, albeit apparently very comfortable ones. Allison’s gone from all phantom-thief black to the exhausted college student look, Derek’s gone from fuck-you-up-black to just broody black, and Danny always looks relatively unassuming in comparison, so he hasn’t actually changed.

“Quiet street,” Allison remarks as Stiles gets the door unlocked. “Cute house. Very suburban.” 

“They can’t  _ all _ be mansions in the Hills,” Stiles says, and finally gets the deadbolt unlocked despite his minutely shaking hands. “Just, you know, one or two.”

He pushes the door open and resolutely ignores the emotions that threaten to wash over him at the sight of the living room. He notices, but doesn’t linger, over the dust covers on the couches, the way the piano against wall is closed, the prevailing smell of dust and stale air. The pale light of an early dawn is coming through a small crack in the drawn curtains.

“Besides, this is technically in the Hills, just not Beverly,” Danny pipes up as they all file inside to stand relatively awkwardly around the living room that has obviously not been used in awhile.

Stiles closes and locks the door, turns the living room light on, and scrubs a hand over his face. “Alright, there’s nonperishables in the kitchen cabinets or an all-night diner a few streets over. Two bedrooms upstairs, two bathrooms, that -“ He points to one of the covered couches. “- pulls out into a bed.”

“We need to pull the van into the garage,” Lydia says, breathing out a very small, very tired sigh.

Stiles grabs a pair of keys off the hook by the door and tosses them to Danny. “You’ll have to pull the Jeep out. Starter is a little off, so just keep trying to turn it over if it doesn’t start right away. Sweet-talk it if you get desperate, that usually works.”

“I’ll help,” Allison says, plucks the keys from Danny’s hand. “I know a thing or two about sweet-talking. Which way’s the garage?”

Stiles waves a hand at the kitchen, and they go, leaving him alone with the two people in the crew most likely to kill him over this whole fiasco. He doesn’t wait around, instead moving to start taking the dust covers off of the couches. 

“Stiles -”

He cuts Lydia off, whipping the covers off of the couches and dropping them in a heap that he’ll deal with later on in the day. The dawn of the day is filtering in through the crack in the curtain more insistently now. “Can we do this later, Lyds? I need at least four hours of sleep and a pot of coffee to deal with an interrogation.”

As always, Lydia glares at the use of the word ‘interrogation.’ “I just need to know if this place is safe. Does Peter know about it?”

The closet is musty when Stiles opens it, but the blankets inside still smell faintly of fabric softener. He pulls out a stack, along with a couple of pillows, and takes the time to ponder how he wants to word his answer. When he gets back to the couch, stack of blankets in one hand and pillows shoved under his arm, he figures he’s too damn tired to lie.

“It’s safe,” Stiles sighs, and drops the bedding on the loveseat so he can turn and start pulling out the bed from the sofa. “Peter knows about it.”

He expects Lydia’s angry sigh. To his surprise though, he looks up and finds her sharing some kind of meaningful glance with Derek. Huh, it’s strange to be on this side of someone having a conversation with Derek’s eyebrows - usually he’s the one in Lydia’s place.

Lydia apparently abandons the eyebrow argument, turns her sharp gaze back to Derek. “How is it safe if Peter  _ knows about it _ , Stiles? We have to assume that everything he knows, Agent McCall knows.”

Stiles fiddles with the couch, trying to get the stupid pull-out bed actually  _ out _ . “Trust me, McCall doesn’t know where we are. This is the safest of Peter’s safehouse because-”

“So this isn’t even  _ your _ safehouse?” Lydia sounds incredulous. 

The couch releases a cloud of dust when Stiles smacks his open palm against it in frustration - anger at the whole situation is building in his chest, to the point where he can feel it in his throat. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “I have thirteen total safehouses, and Peter knows about ten. With the information that Peter  _ also _ knows about my aliases and accounts, the other three can be found in a pretty short matter of time. And that’s just using what he knows about me, we have  _ no idea  _ what he knows about all of you.” The stupid bed still won’t just  _ fucking come out _ . “Derek, could you kindly make this sofa work so that I don’t torch it?”

He steps back as Derek steps forward to take over, and the door to the garage opens in the kitchen, signalling the return of Danny and Allison. He scrubs his face again, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes for a second to watch the colors explode, breathes for just a moment. When he opens them again, Lydia is staring at him expectantly while Danny attempts to help with the sofa and Allison drops onto the loveseat in an exhausted sprawl. 

“We can’t use anything that Peter would have had to give up about me,” Stiles says. “But we also can’t use anything that even  _ could _ be compromised of any of yours. No safehouses, limited bank accounts, everything that’s not locked down tight is a risk. This house?” He waves a hand to indicate the whole place. “I know without a doubt that this safehouse will be the second-to-last thing Peter gives up, and it would take a hell of a lot to pry this information out of him - he’d die before he led them here.”

Silence follows his words. Then, with the screech of disuse, the sofa bed finally allows itself to be pried out. So at least one thing is going halfway-right. 

“How do you know?” Lydia asks, because god forbid she just leave well enough alone. Stiles is both consistently impressed and vexed by her quest for all of the information she can get her hands on. 

Derek beats him to the answer. “Because it’s Beacon Hills.” He steps back from the sofa, turns that intense gaze onto Stiles. “It’s too close to home.”

Stiles nods, keeps his eyes on Derek even as Lydia, Danny, and Allison all turn to look at him again. “Compromises too many people,” Stiles says. “If Peter leads McCall here, he screws over what’s left of the Hales, including Derek. And trust me, McCall doesn’t  _ want _ to come back here - he’s not exactly popular with the locals.”

“You know an awful lot about Beacon Hills, Stiles,” Lydia says, and Stiles kind of wants to put his head through a wall.

“Four hours of sleep, that’s all I’m asking. Four hours and a pot of coffee.” He’s well-aware he sounds like he’s whining, hell, he might actually be outright whining. “I don’t care if you snoop through the whole damn house, just let me sleep long enough that I don’t feel like I’m about to claw my own skin off.”

She looks like she wants to argue, but Derek nods decisively and tosses a pillow onto the sofa bed, grabbing a blanket and making it very, very clear that he’s going to be claiming it as his own. 

Allison heaves herself off of the loveseat, somehow still managing to seem the epitome of grace as she does, taking Derek’s cue. “Lydia and I can double up in one of the bedrooms,” she says. 

“The master has a bathroom off of it.” Half of Stiles’ sentence turns into a yawn. “The guest bedroom is a full, not a queen, anyway.”

“I’ll take that one,” Danny says, but pauses. “Wait, where are you going to sleep, then? I mean, a full could probably hold both of us, but it would be tight.” 

It’s a gentle offer - Stiles very rarely shares a bed with any of them, even if the situation is tight in terms of sleeping arrangements. He’s been known to sleep in bathtubs or between hotel beds if he has to, but someone always offers to share. Notable exceptions include when he was taking painkillers for a broken wrist, and That One Time No One Talks About where Lydia fell asleep crying on Stiles.

“Sofa bed’s big enough,” Derek adds, which is actually a more plausible offer. Derek’s the only one that Stiles has actually willingly fallen asleep next to without the aid of drugs, but he couldn’t explain why if pressed. There’s just a level of trust there that Stiles can’t explain, and it seems to go both ways.

He gives it a thought, but ultimately, Stiles shakes his head in a no. “There’s a couch in the office down the hall,” he says. “I’ll sleep there.” 

“Are you sure?” Allison asks gently, bless her. “Lydia and I don’t want to put you out of your own bed, Stiles.” 

It seems that Allison has clued in on what no one else has, despite them all being veritable geniuses of some kind or another. He can hear the collective intake of breath, even if he doesn’t witness it, closes his eyes against it as he forces a small smile. They all realize at once - maybe not Derek, but definitely everyone else - that this was not just Peter’s safehouse, it was Peter’s and Stiles’. 

“I won’t sleep in there, Ally,” Stiles says, and the admission of truth, even to these people that he’s learning to trust, feels foreign and heavy on his tongue. He considers, briefly, confessing that he doesn’t want to sleep in that bed without Peter in it, doesn’t want to have to roll over and expect to see something that won’t be there, even if he hasn’t been in this house in two years and some odd months. Far too much truth for this early in the morning and how sleep-deprived they are, he thinks. “I’ll sleep better in the office.”

They disperse to their sleeping arrangements. He watches Danny, Allison, and Lydia go upstairs, and then Stiles grabs a pillow and blanket from the pile on the loveseat, taking a moment to toss an extra quilt at Derek because he knows Derek won’t take an extra one for himself. He pauses at the arch between the hall and the living room, falters for a second now that he’s finally been granted a quiet moment. 

“Stiles,” Derek says from the sofa bed, and Stiles turns just enough to see the shape of him in the early morning light that’s creeping in through the curtains. “Go to sleep. Everything else can wait.”

Stiles nods, though he’s sure Derek doesn’t even have his eyes open and probably isn’t even turned toward Stiles. He’s right, though - ‘everything else’ from the situation to the interrogation to Stiles’ own maelstrom of feelings can wait for four hours while he catches some rest. 

Well. Almost everything.

Stiles goes into the office and closes the door softly behind him. He drops the pillow and the blanket on the sofa and takes a moment to look around, wonders if Peter did the same when he was in here last, when he was finding out that Stiles wasn’t dead. The desk is neat, no papers in sight, and it’s strange to see all of the books on shelves rather than scattered throughout the room with post-it notes or bookmarks or even just left open to come back to later. He’s pretty sure he was actually in the middle of one when they left for Vancouver, but he can’t recall what it was now. Peter must have come in and tidied everything up.

He may have wanted to put off the emotions but they come nonetheless, rushing at him and threatening to bring him low in a way he hasn’t been since the clusterfuck that was Vancouver. Stiles had managed to… not exactly forget, but instead to convince himself that it’s just better this way, better if he cuts ties and carries on. He had thought that this way would lead to less heartache down the road in the long run, but here he is again.

Standing in the house he had shared with Peter for three blissful months, while his new crew, his new  _ family _ , trusts him to know that this is a safe enough place to rest.

Fuck. He’s got even more to lose now, more than ever before.

Stiles breathes through the wave of crushing anxiety and emotions he can’t even really name, moves instead to pull the painting off the wall. It’s some artist he doesn’t remember, something Stiles had stolen before Aruba because he thought it looked nice, and Stiles leans it gently against the bookshelf nearby so that it doesn’t get damaged.

The safe is easy to get into, because this is one that Stiles actually knows the combination to and doesn’t have to crack (that’s actually usually Allison’s game these days, though Stiles isn’t too shabby at it). He pulls out what he needs, the stack of manila folders and the lockbox in the back, and drops them on the desk to go through in the morning - or, well, later in the day when he wakes up. He pulls the rings out as he walks back over to the safe, holds them for a moment, before he carefully places them inside, before he closes and locks the safe once more. He hangs the painting up again, carefully making sure it’s straight as he steps back.

If this works, he tells himself, he’ll come back for them. If it doesn’t…

Well, if it doesn’t, Stiles won’t need them anymore.

He takes a moment to look over the folders, shoves a couple in the drawer of the desk in case he needs them later as an ace up his sleeve. The rest should be enough to get the job done, and as he flips through them and sorts them a picture starts to form in his head. 

Old file on Agent Lydia Martin to the left, a business card for Jackson Whittemore, attorney at law, paperclipped to the front. None of it’s current, none of it matters, except for one single piece. Hell, Lydia even knows that Stiles knows most of it, anyway.

Deed to the Hale Property on the edge of the Preserve in Beacon Hills - in Peter’s name, but they can change that if they have to with some help from Danny - and all of the legitimate important documents for the surviving Hale family with no mention of any of their illegal ties.

A file with a picture of a little girl that Stiles has only met once, a birth certificate for Malia Hale, a single sheet of paper on the death of Corinne, and a mix of official information and unofficial information on the Tates. The last update, according to the scrawled date on the back of the paper in Peter’s hand, is roughly six months ago. 

Papers upon papers that prove what Stiles has done over the years, that, when put together like this, create a pretty clear picture of his crimes. It’s not everything, and it’s got nothing from when he joined Lydia and the crew, but it’s damning for Mischief. Links a whole lot of people to him, too, and includes at least two security camera stills of his face, one single mention of his real name as a “person of interest” in a homicide report, and a copy of his California marriage license tying him to Peter Hale. It’s his confession, neatly organized into one folder, waiting to self-destruct and take them all out in the explosion.

One file set to the right, on Scott McCall and the alleged murders of Gerard and Kate Argent. Transcripts of the hours in the interview room that Scott spent talking everyone in circles without confessing or even guiding them in the right direction. Copies of all the documented evidence against Scott, thanks to the agent that used to be on Peter’s payroll before he was found out, and copies of all the court documents they could get, courtesy of the lawyer on  _ Stiles _ ’ payroll. 

A file underneath that on the Hale fire - Stiles takes a moment to pull the pictures out and shove them in another drawer of the desk, knowing that even if he’s got to open old wounds, he doesn’t need to rub salt in them. Some of it’s official, like the news clippings and the illegally obtained files from the departments who worked it. Some of it is in Peter’s handwriting, or information from his research.

Finally, on top of the middle papers, the lockbox. It’s not actually locked, so Stiles doesn’t have to fish the key out of the bottom drawer of the desk. He opens the lid and rifles through the contents, checking that everything is there - six passports, dozens of fake badges and IDs with his face on them, a stack of currency from five different countries. A key at the bottom to a storage unit in downtown Los Angeles, coordinates written on a scrap of paper. His emergency stash, his ‘get to a country with no extradition treaty until you can disappear’ plan, his last-ditch Hail Mary.

Evidence, laid out. Escape, neatly on top of it all. 

All the leverage he needs.

Stiles breathes out a long breath. It’s not exactly everything, but it’s enough. It’ll get the job done and then some, that’s for damn sure. Four hours and one pot of coffee, and then he’ll stroll himself casually into Hell with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face.


End file.
